


Rice will do the Trick

by Wino



Series: The Darcy fix no one asked for [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Darcyland, Dorks in Love, F/F, Natasha Needs a Hug, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Iron Man 1, Pre-Thor (2011), SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Someone has no idea of how relationships work, The Author has no idea what she's doing, but she's loving it, but they're trying.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wino/pseuds/Wino
Summary: Natasha didn't show up for ballet classes for adults 'interested into something different'.She'd been trained to twirl on her toes since she was a little girl; she did not need amateur classes.Natalie Rushman, apparently, did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, uhm, wow, I've been working on this for a week...ish?  
> I had all the proud feels on this and then insecurities and I wanted to destroy it.  
> Then people kind of made me feel better, so there. Here it is.  
> I wanted to thank Plot Bunny #74, who helped me with the story.  
> Then @bloomingsoftly and @usedkarma swooped in and saved the day.  
> So, Thank you so much @bloomingsoftly that helped me with the Beta, with my random ideas and as a general sounding board and @usedkarma, who helped me with a fantabulous pep-talk. You're awesome.
> 
> So, uhm, hopefully you'll like it and let me know!  
> Thank you so much for stopping here.

Natasha didn't show up for ballet classes for adults 'interested into something different'.

  
She'd been trained to twirl on her toes since she was a little girl; she did not need amateur classes.

  
Natalie Rushman, apparently, did.

  
According to her life story, she was always into doing something new, and the shiny new card in her purse attested to the fact that yes, she did take adult classes every evening from Thursday through Saturday as soon as her shift at SI ended.

Natasha wanted to scream.

  
The other students were clearly amateurs. Not one of them had been trained professionally, their movements weren't perfect and their lines anything but beautiful. They looked much like ducklings: cute, but definitely not swan material.

  
That was fine.

  
That didn't bother her as much as she thought it would.

  
Since the day she'd come to classes, the girls had closed ranks with wide stares and false smiles, and had proceeded with their lesson as if nothing had happened.  
They had never tried to approach her to start conversation, and would largely ignore her.

  
That suited her just fine, too.

  
Natalie would come to the changing rooms every evening she was supposed to, she'd get to the dance room before the teacher, follow her lesson and leave without speaking a word. She knew from the conversations she overheard in the changing rooms that the blonde, Lucy, was training to be a nurse and that the twins were doctors. They wouldn't meet her eyes as they all left together.

  
Natalie forced herself to believe rejection didn't sting. Natasha reminded herself that she didn't need 'friends' for this cover, and that Natalie would be dead before the year was out anyways.

* * *

  
A month later the class had doubled, there were twelve of them, all amateurs twirling on a parquet.

  
- _Click click_ -

  
The sound of the shutter gave her pause.

  
There was a girl behind the glass panels of the studio, in the far left corner, taking pictures with a camera. She was completely engrossed in her work, the brown curls on her head bobbing slightly with every movement she made.

  
Natalie tried not to concern herself with the girl, but after the fourth occasion in which she appeared, she broached the subject with her 'colleagues'.

  
"It's just one of the photography class students," huffed Karen. "She'll get bored soon enough and you'll be left in peace."

  
She didn't. The girl kept coming and coming. After a while, she even joined the other spectators, boyfriends and friends and snoopers that loitered about while the women practiced.

* * *

  
The whole situation evolved to a point where it was clear that the girl was coming just for her, sometimes with her camera and sometimes just lingering in the back of the studio. Natasha took the new admirer in stride; after all, there was nothing compromising that could be linked to her. And if there was, it was nothing that couldn't be _encouraged_ to be forgotten. However, the rest of her classmates seemed to be much less understanding.

  
Of course, being ‘classy,’ adult women meant that none of that was ever said to her face. The tight smiles continued as if nothing had changed, even if their speculative eyes lingered on Natalie a tad longer. But Natalie heard the girls whispering behind her back.

  
Not that she cared that much, of course.

  
And then, one day, as she got back to the changing rooms and reached for her locker, she found it slightly ajar. Natalie's stupid girly cellphone nowhere to be found.  
She wanted to laugh or cry, or both, because the situation was just so ridiculous.

  
Never, in her many years, had such a petty thing happened to her. And for such a petty reason, too. Natasha hoped that this op would be truly worth it, because the middle school experience was not something she had wanted to try.

  
Natalie sighed, reminding herself that while her cover had taken some classes in Krav Maga she was not a super secret spy (agent) and that she would be taking the high road with this, because a group of ballerina wannabes looking for attention was not a target, but some kind of cosmic joke.

* * *

 

"Of course they'd leave it in the toilet!” she sighed, looking at her phone.

  
She fished it out, ready to declare it dead and just buy another burner phone. It wasn't personal anyways.

"Rice will do the trick," a voice said from behind her. It was the girl.

  
Natasha snorted, unconvinced. "Thanks, but this is pretty much destroyed, I'm afraid. It fell rather spectacularly."

  
“Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.” She smiled “My roommate is always dropping hers into the fishbowl she insists on keeping on the counter. We've managed successful CPR on the poor buddy three times so far.” She confided, proudly.

  
Natalie's lips twitched with a smile “Thank you.”

  
“No problem!” chirped the girl. “So anyways, I'm Darcy.”

  
“Natalie.”

  
“Hi Natalie, nice to meet you,” Darcy smiled brilliantly. “Look, I don't know if you noticed but I've been kind of stalking you while you were dancing there, sorry? It's just that you're like, leagues above the others. And you're just so easy to capture, I mean, you should have been a model!”

  
The girl had some serious lungs for being able to say all of that in one single breath, Natasha had to admit. “What are you _doing_ in the beginners class anyways? Your lines are too clean to be an amateur. I just..” Darcy trailed off, clearly flustered.

  
“Thanks, I suppose?” Natalie smiled faintly. “And yes, I had noticed. It's hard not to notice the shutter and the flash going off every time you move.”

  
“I'm so sorry.” Darcy repeated, “I'll stop, promise.”

  
When it was clear that Darcy was expecting her to say something, Natalie added “It's ok, I don't mind”. She then shook her phone “And thanks for this, I'll just go to buy some rice.”

  
“Oh! Of course! I'll leave you to perform your surgery then, sorry again about the photos. See you, Natalie!” and with that she was gone, her very red scarf fluttering behind her.

* * *

  
Next week found Natalie à la barre again. The single episode with the cellphone, which was a promise of new episodes to come, required her to confront the clique of friends in a very calculated, cold manner. She hadn't even needed Natasha to scare them properly. They still avoided her, but now more than ever it was clear that the red headed woman would not stand for the petty bullying. The ‘accident’ would not repeat itself, apparently.

  
What was surprising, however, was the fact that Darcy was waiting for her again. She thought she had seen the last of her.

  
“Hey!” she started, waving at her. “How's your cellphone, in the end?”

  
“Dead, I'm afraid.” Natalie sighed, glancing at the women behind her, who twitched and left rather quickly.

  
“Aw, pity” Darcy exclaimed. “So, um, I was going to get some coffee, do you want to come along? Totally no problem if you don't.” Her eyes were shining with hope.

  
Natasha sighed at the obvious display of emotion on the young woman's face.

  
But Natalie was a nice girl, if a bit standoffish, and so she smiled anyway “Sure, but not today? I still have some errands to run, I'm really sorry.”

  
“Oh, ok, no problem!” Darcy nodded, “I'll just, leave you... my number...”. She fished a scrap of paper from her big brown bag and scribbled her number quickly “Call me, if you want, ok?”

  
Natasha thought it was a terrible, terrible idea.

  
Natalie thought Darcy was the first genuinely honest face she had seen in the last two months undercover.

* * *

  
It took Natalie four days to call Darcy.

  
The young woman was so happy that her joy was infectious, and Natasha found herself smiling on the phone.

  
The coffee shop was crowded, the people loud and the coffee was not what she had ordered, and yet after two months of deep cover, going out with Darcy was a breath of fresh air Natasha didn't know she'd missed.

  
Clint must have made her softer than she thought, she mused, because before she knew it, she and Darcy had become regulars at the tiny table in the right corner of the shop.

  
“- And so I said 'I dress however I please. You're _welcome_!' You should have seen his face!” Darcy exclaimed, her hands flailing as she narrated her latest adventure.

  
Natasha had gotten used to such antics from Darcy after their first few dates.

  
She was vibrant, extremely vivacious and colorful, and most of all completely unapologetic about it all. Normal conventions just didn't apply to her. She would place herself in the middle of a room while listening to her iPod, clad in those red and orange and bright pink scarves and the hats she knitted herself; she would loudly interrupt and verbally slap rude people wherever she met one (“It's my asshole-o-meter, Nat! It's like my superpower. I see one of those douches and I just _need_ to tell them they're pigs!”) and she always carried a less-than-legal taser with her (“It's not like I'm _using_ it, Nat, I swear!”).

All in all, Natasha really liked the woman.

  
“-so I moved all of my stu- Natalie?” Darcy was still talking and Natalie startled, distracted.

  
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “It's been a horrible day at work”.

  
Darcy made sympathetic noises “I can only imagine.” She patted her hand. “Must be a nightmare to work for SI after the whole 'I'm closing the company and seeing where we go from there.' It was all over the news yesterday.”

  
“You have no idea” Natalie huffed.

  
“Anyways, sorry, but I was saying, I'm going back to Culver next week.”

  
Natalie blinked, surprised. “You are?”

  
“Yeaah,” Darcy started. “Gap year's over, I need to get back on track if I want my degree. I mean, I'm like six credits short or so, and student loans don't disappear into thin air, either,” she tried to joke, even if her smile dimmed a bit. “I'm totally going to call you every day though, and I'm so going to miss you, but we've got cell phones and I'm not going to disappear, so don't worry!”

  
If Darcy noticed Natalie's smile straining, her face pale at the mention of disappearing, she didn't show it.

* * *

  
“Do you need me to hide you?”

  
Natasha blinked, taken aback “What?”

  
“You heard me.” Said Darcy from the other side of the phone. “If you need somewhere to hide for a few days, just say the word and I'll make room for you. Daisy can stay with her boyfriend for a few days, she doesn't mind.”

  
Indignant squawking noises in the background said that Daisy did indeed mind, but there was a hissing sound and a yelped 'you wouldn't dare!' before Daisy the roommate decided to stay silent.

  
“I'm not sure I follow,” chuckled Natasha, from the SHIELD cafeteria. A couple of baby agents gaped at her and went crashing into each other nearby. She raised her eyebrows at them, and they scrambled back as if struck.

  
“Nat,” Darcy began patiently. “Your boss just said to the world that he is Iron Man! _Fucking Iron Man_! It's like a political nightmare and disaster all wrapped in one, I can't imagine what you're going through at SI! So, if you need to escape the madness...” she let the sentence hang in the air and Natasha smiled over the phone.

  
She could feel Clint staring at her from their table.

  
“I think I have it under control, but thank you.” She said. “What about you? How are your plans for world domination coming along?”

  
“Please, the world would love me as their benevolent overlord” Darcy offered confidently. “But seriously, I'm scouring every single request for internships and there is, like, nothing available. I fear I'll have to take something serious like biology or actual _math_.”

  
“Oh, the horror!” Natasha replied, “whatever shall you do?”

  
“Ha-ha. I have... no idea. I'll think of something”

  
A loud crash was heard in the distance and Darcy cursed. “I've got to go. You hang in there Nat, maybe I'll kick Daisy out anyways and you can come stay. Bye!” She didn't even wait for an answer.

  
Natasha closed her phone, bemusedly.

  
She could feel Clint vibrate in his seat. He was trying to look politely disinterested, but he couldn't really fool her.

  
“Spit it out, Barton.” She sighed.

  
“So...” he started nonchalantly. “Who was that? You're never calling anyone, and that sure wasn't Coulson.”

  
“A friend.” She answered briskly, unwilling to give up any information in the middle of the cafeteria, even though no one seemed to be listening in.

  
“Okay.” Clint accepted it easily, but kept shooting her looks throughout lunch.

  
Natasha didn't care. Maybe it was petty, but it felt good to have some sort of nice secret of her own, one that for once didn't involve blood or weapons.

* * *

  
“New Mexico?” Natalie was skeptical, as she stared at the last few mails in her inbox, wishing they would disappear. Winter was approaching swiftly but the tiny offices were toasty warm, almost stifling.

  
“Yes!” She could feel Darcy beaming from there. “I got the internship, isn't it great?”

  
Natalie shook her head fondly. “And what will you even be doing there?”

  
“Uhm, stargazing? I mean, the boss-lady's cool. I was the only applicant, so I figure she'll have me collate the data and possibly feed her, you know?”

  
Natasha did know.

  
“I'm sorry I'm missing Christmas, though.”

Natalie smiled. “When are you leaving?”

  
“Next week-ish? Depends on when Donald the boyfriend, Jane's boyfriend, you know? Can come and get me from the airport.”

  
“I see. Well, have fun?”

  
“You bet!”

* * *

  
For Christmas, her phone received a picture of Dr. Jane Foster, sporting fake reindeer antlers, and Darcy, wearing her ugly Christmas sweater (It's traditional!)

  
_'Merry Christmas, Natalie'_.

  
Natasha frowned at the reminder that it wasn't her name on the card, but Natalie felt the beginning of a smile on her face.

  
For now, it was enough.

* * *

  
Until suddenly it wasn't enough anymore.

  
As Natasha cleaned up the rest of her 'Natalie' cover, Stark Expo a memory behind her and another mission, she looked at her burner phone.

  
She spent the next hour thinking, debating with herself about what to do with Darcy. In the end, in a completely out of character move on her part, she left Darcy a very cryptic message, in the hope she'd call and left it at that.

  
Darcy didn't call for a week, and every subsequent call she made went straight to voicemail.

  
“One more week,” she told herself. “One more week before I burn it.”

  
One more week turned into five months.

  
After the first two weeks, Natasha had stopped calling. She kept the pink phone charged at all times, and glanced at it regularly every night.

  
But after five months of silence, she convinced herself that this was for the best, refused to cry about it and destroyed the last of Natalie Rushman's mementos.

  
After a fortnight, she told herself that it didn't hurt anymore.

* * *

  
Aliens happened, and her red hair was plastered all over the news along a Star Spangled Shield, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk.

  
And then Coulson was dead, and she and Clint found themselves accepting Stark's hospitality.

  
The Tower was large and empty, so empty with so few people, and the fact that no one really wanted to interact with each other didn't help any.

  
Natasha ignored the feeling of loneliness that had crept in her bones for the last twelve months, and went on with her life.

* * *

  
It wasn't long before Tony Stark's mania for collecting Avengers memorabilia evolved into collecting people.

  
After remembering Thor's talks of his “Lady Jane” in Tromso, it didn't take long for him to snap his fingers and summon Dr Jane Foster from the woodwork.

  
What Natasha did not expect were the brown curls and the knitted hat that followed her.

  
Darcy Lewis _had_ graduated, she had checked after all, and yet apparently was still following the waifish astrophysicist around.

  
It put Natasha in a somewhat uncomfortable position, even if the sting of rejection should have faded ages ago. It hadn't.

  
She resolved to avoid the woman as much as politely possible, in order not to make her uncomfortable.

  
Unfortunately, life had different plans, and no later than five days since her arrival, Darcy Lewis sought her out.

  
“So it _was_ you I saw on TV last month.” She began casually. “For a while I had wondered, but your shade of red is very peculiar. So much so that I haven't seen a single being on this planet sporting it, except you.” She sounded pissed off and upset at the same time. “So please understand my confusion as I find out that my girlfriend, my very _dead_ girlfriend listed in the casualties of Stark Expo 2011 is alive and kicking alien asses without telling me?!” Her voice had raised in pitch the more distressed she became.  
Natasha's world flipped once again as the implications hit her.

  
“I was listed as dead?” She hadn't known that SHIELD had done that. Natalie Rushman's cover was blown, there had been no reason to come back to it and investigate. Apparently, the cover was so blown she had died.

  
“Yes. Yes you were.” Darcy looked about to cry. “When the jack-booted thugs gave us our tech back in New Mexico, everything was conveniently wiped, from my laptop to my phone to my fucking iPod. I checked the news and found _your name_ in the obituary list. The _obituary_. I didn't even know if you had left me a message, or anything! And the service, oh my God I didn't know where to go for your _funeral_!” She cried then, her eyes red and puffy as tears streamed down her face.

  
Natasha closed her eyes, unable to watch.

  
“I had,” she said, after a minute.

  
“What?” Darcy sniffled.

  
“Left you a message. I tried to explain, but the words didn't come out right and then you never called back.” Natasha gave her a small smile. She was not getting teary. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with me anymore, so I left you be.”

  
Darcy made a strangled noise in the back of her throat, and looked at her in the eye. Natasha stared back. After a while, Darcy nodded, sniffled a bit more and left the room.

  
Natasha believed in Hell, and she also believed that the hurt look Darcy had shot her was extremely close to her idea of it.

* * *

  
They didn't see each other for a while.

  
Every time Natasha thought of her, her crying face flashed before her eyes and she had to swallow a new wave of guilt.

  
If only she had tried a bit more, if only she had checked...

  
And the regrets tore at her mercilessly.

* * *

  
It was some time later that she found Darcy alone in the kitchen, making frustrated noises at a small electronic device that probably belonged to Jane Foster. It was covered in tape, held together by a prayer and a half and was as of now soaked.

  
She was poking it without really seeing it.

  
As soon as Darcy noticed Natasha, she tensed.

  
Natasha sighed, and went about retrieving the water she had come to the kitchen for.

  
“I'm still angry at you.” Darcy's abrupt voice stopped her in her tracks. “I know that it wasn't completely your fault, but I'm still angry.”

  
Natasha looked at her, and nodded. “I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt you.” And she meant it.

  
“I know.” She nodded back. “And I'm sorry I hurt you, too.”

  
Natasha gave her a small smile.

  
Then she looked at the wet instrument. Silently, she rustled into the cupboards until she found what she was looking for.

  
She handed Darcy a small packet of rice.

“Someone very dear to me, told me that rice does the trick”

  
Darcy snorted. “Yeah? She must be very smart.” She smiled a bit, her eyes suspiciously shiny.

  
Natasha smiled a bit wider. “The best.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is an exercise in writing, English is not my first language but I had a fantastic Beta so it should be fine.  
> I tried to stick it as close as possible to canon, but I might have spectacularly failed. If so, whoops.
> 
> A couple of answers because just in case:  
> \- Why was Natasha already undercover?  
> Because we're talking Stark Industries. Do you really think that Pepper Potts would have just put someone as Tony's PA if she hadn't known them for at least a little while? I mean, "Natalie from Legal" doesn't cut it, unless Natasha had been undercover for MONTHS before things happened. It would absolutely make sense for SHIELD to send someone while Tony was in the hands of the Ten Rings.  
> \- Why was Natasha at a ballet class?  
> Because her cover story said so. I'm sure someone is paying dearly for this *screams in the distance*


End file.
